Bond of Brothers
by Jedi Master Calriel
Summary: AU. Selena refused to subject a child to the lifestyle her husband had created for her. She hid her pregnancies and gave up her children to the care of her brother and his wife, to be raised as the younger brothers of their own son. A new destiny was begu
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: If I owned Eragon, it would not be half as predictable, nor would the movie producers have mangled it the way they did.

Bond of Brothers

Prologue

Selena had known of her husband's cruelty for many years. It was this that had prompted her to hide her first pregnancy from him two years ago; it was this that forced her to do so a second time. He never suspected a thing; never took the time to care if she were around or not. So when she had asked for his consent to visit her brother, he never thought she had a ulterior motive.

He thought her barren, she was sure. He was arrogant enough to believe that the love she felt for the man he had been carried over to the man he became. Either that or he believed her to afraid to defy him. It didn't really matter to her, but she would not bring a child into her husband's world. The child would either die from abuse or worse, become like his father.

She sighed in relief as she came upon her brother's small house. She would remain here until her child was born. '_Besides,'_ she thought, '_it gives me a chance to get to know my little Murtagh.'_

Elsewhere

The self-styled king Galbatorix raged as the Shade delivered the news. Those imbeciles were useless! Not only had the Varden stolen from him, they had taken all three of last remaining eggs! And now this Shade wanted him to believe that everything had been done to recover them. It took him less than a second to draw his blade and stab the foul creature through the heart. Failure was not acceptable.

Tbc…

Hope you enjoyed! BTW, can anyone tell me the color of the third egg? I cannot remember for the life of me.


	2. Chapter One

Disclaimer: See Prologue

Bond of Brothers

Chapter One

Eragon crept up on his target with caution. He carefully notched an arrow and aimed it at the doe. His family did not particularly need this last doe because of all the game they had killed on this hunting trip, but he wanted to bag a target that he could call his own. He inched closer to the deer and prepared to fire the arrow when a huge explosion threw him forward and the startled doe quickly fled.

"Eragon!" The cry of his brother filled the silence left behind by the explosion. Now he was in for it. Murtagh could be a little irrational in his need to protect his brother, and the fact that he had gone ahead alone without informing either him or Roran, well, needless to say, his brother would likely to be very irritated with him.

"Are you alright?" Murtagh asked, concerned as he and Roran crouched down beside where Eragon had fallen.

"Fine," he replied, sitting up with a groan.

"What were you thinking?" Murtagh exclaimed, his anger surfacing with his brother's apparent well-being. "The Spine is not a place to go wandering off alone! Look what just happened! If you had been any nearer to that explosion it would have killed you!"

"Calm down, Murtagh," Roran said soothingly. Roran was only about three months older than Murtagh, but both boys looked up to the seventeen year old and considered him their older brother. Where Eragon was the adventurous dreamer and Murtagh the protector, Roran was the firm foundation upon which the trio stood. From the moment Murtagh had been born and left in the care of his Uncle Garrow, he and Roran had been inseparable. When Eragon had joined them two years later, the bond linking the three together had been cemented.

"Eragon is fine," Roran continued. "And there is no harm done. I am sure that he will not do anything as foolish again."

'_That hurt,' _Eragon thought. It was bad enough that Murtagh had scolded him, but that was typical of him when he was worried. However, Roran's quiet disappointment cut much deeper.

"What happened anyway?" Murtagh asked, looking over to where the explosion had come from.

"I don't… What's that?" Eragon asked, getting up and peering into the smoke surrounding the charred area. Nestled in the center were three beautifully polished, foot-long stones, each of a different hue. One was a gorgeous deep blue, another a brilliant fiery red, and the other a radiant emerald green. All three had tiny white veins running through them. None of the boys had ever seen anything like them before.

"Are they what caused the explosion?" Roran asked dubiously.

"No, magic caused that blast, nothing else could have," Murtagh said warily.

"Nevertheless, those stones look like they could be very valuable," Eragon commented. "Should we take them back with us and sell them?"  
Murtagh and Eragon both looked to Roran. "Yes," he replied, after a moment's consideration. "But we won't sell them right away. We have all we need for the winter and our surplus is bound to get us enough for the taxes, maybe more. We should save them for when we need them more." They nodded in agreement and each went to grab a stone.

When Eragon reached for the green one, he snatched his hand away as if he were burned. He was about to voice his misgivings when he saw Murtagh having no problem picking up the red stone. Shrugging, he reached for the blue stone and had no trouble lifting it. As Roran grabbed the green stone, he started to warn him, but found there was no need. Shrugging again, he turned with his brothers to head home.

OoooOoooOoooO

Their trek home was long and tedious, but uneventful for the most part. By the time they reached the small house on the far outskirts of Carvahall, winter was almost upon them.

"The traders should be in town by now," Eragon remarked. "If we haven't already missed them. They were due three days ago, I believe."  
"They haven't come yet. Look at the road," Roran pointed out. "Nobody has passed that way in a while."

"It will be a difficult time for everyone if they don't come. We have to sell our surplus to them for our tax money," Murtagh warned.

"Maybe they were just held up by the weather," Eragon suggested half-heartedly.

"Let us hope so," Roran said gravely as Garrow came out of the house to greet them.

"Finally, my sons have returned! And with plenty of meat to last the winter I see!" he exclaimed. "Come on then. Get the horses unloaded and come in for supper."

As they unloaded the horses, they all three agreed that there was no use telling Garrow about the stones. Not that they did not trust him, far from it. They just felt no need to worry him unnecessarily, which he would most likely do if he were to know how they came upon them.

OoooOoooOoooO

It was four more days until the traders came. Garrow and his family had begun to worry about trading in town for what they needed when Eragon walked out to the road and came back reporting many ruts from wagon wheels and hoof prints were there was once only deep drifts of snow.

They loaded down their wagon that morning and arrived in Carvahall by noon. Garrow gave the boys a few coins each and shooed them away while he did the trading. As they wandered among the many booths, they noticed a new air around the traders. They looked less jovial than previous years, more wary and subdued. After talking with a few, they came to learn of the Urgals' new daring rampage and a haunting rumor of a Shade. This unsettled them greatly, and they worried what would become of them if either menaces ventured as close to the mountains and the Spine as Carvahall.

Their unease was forgotten for the moment when the troubadours and minstrels took the stage that night. The frivolity of their tales lightened their mood considerably. But the atmosphere soon took on a somber feel as Brom, the town storyteller and friend of Eragon, took the scene and told of the Dragon Riders of the past and the madness of Galbatorix and the betrayal of the Forsworn Thirteen. The tale stayed with the trio as they rode back to their small house with Garrow.

"There's something I don't understand," Murtagh whispered as the three of them rode behind the wagon out of earshot of Garrow. "If Galbatorix stole a dragon hatchling, how could he have bonded with it?"

"What do you mean?" Eragon asked.

"Well," he explained. "A dragon only hatches for its chosen Rider, or so the stories go. So if Galbatorix's dragon was already hatched, how did he form the bond with it?"

"Dark magic," Roran answered. "It's the only way. The poor dragon was probably put under his spell from the moment he made contact with it. For it to be under such darkness for such a long time, it is probably as mad as Galbatorix by now."

"Why have there been no more Riders since the death of the Forsworn though?" Eragon asked. "Surely there are more dragon eggs waiting for their rightful Riders."

"If there are, Galbatorix probably has them very well guarded," Murtagh replied.

"Quiet you three!" Garrow hissed, catching the topic of their conversation. "It is dangerous to talk about such a subject. Why, if Galbatorix ever caught wind of Brom telling that story, he would not live to see the new month!"

Tbc…


	3. Chapter Two

Disclaimer: See Prologue.

Bond of Brothers

Chapter Two

"You did what?!?" a strongly built man with ebony skin cried, looking at the graceful raven-haired elf maiden furiously.

"I did what I had to!" she protested. "The Shade would have surely captured the eggs if I hadn't! My spell distracted it long enough for me to get away! And what's better, the Empire still thinks we have them. They have no reason to suspect they were lost, and will not have any reason to look for them. We can recover them!"

"And if they hatch before that!" a disgruntled dwarf argued. "If the dragons chose Riders within our own ranks, we wouldn't have anything to worry about. However, if they choose outside of the Varden or the elves, their Riders, even if they don't join Galbatorix, may get ideas of restoring the old glory of the Riders. Do we want to overthrow one tyrant to be replaced by more?"

"You know not what you say!" the elf stated harshly. "The Riders ruled for thousands of years and allowed this land to flourish! Dragons do not chose twisted hearts!"

"Then explain Galbatorix and the Forsworn?" he countered.

"Madness and dark magic corrupt even the purest heart if it is not on guard," she replied cryptically.

"Enough of this!" the human cried. "We need to concentrate on finding the eggs, not arguing with each other."

OoooOoooOoooO

Murtagh groaned as a faint knocking reached him deep in his slumber. He tried futilely to ignore it, but it was persistent. He opened his eyes and looked around to discover the source of his unwelcome wake-up call. When he could see nothing, he got up to investigate. It took him a few moments to realize the noise was coming from the place where he had hidden the red stone.

The three of them had decided it was best for each of them to keep a stone with them. Whether this was for fear of Garrow discovering them, to prevent all three from being stolen, or because each of them had formed a certain attachment to them, none of them could say for sure. However, none felt comfortable letting the stones out of their sight for very long.

Now, the crimson stone was shaking uncontrollably while Murtagh watched on in shock, horror, and an unexplainable feeling of anticipation. The shaking climaxed when a single crack appeared in the smooth surface, followed by many more. The growing cracks came together, and it seemed as if something were pushing against them from inside the stone. Suddenly, a small triangular head peeked out of the hole that had finally be punched out of the stone. It clicked inside of Murtagh's head that this was no stone, but an egg just as the gangly creature worked itself out of the egg and its membrane.

It took a moment for Murtagh to realize that the awkward winged lizard-like creature was actually a dragon. He sat stunned at the realization before reaching forward to touch the dragon with his right hand. The moment he made contact with it, his snatched his hand back in pain. He looked at his palm and on it was now an oval shaped white scar with a silvery gleam to it. He was suddenly wrenched from his thoughts by a tapping at his door.

"Murtagh!" the quiet voice of his younger brother hissed before he carefully opened the door, mindful to keep any hinge-creaking to a minimum. In his arms, was a dragon much like the one that had just come out of his stone, or egg as it were. However, where his dragon had rich, crimson scales and brilliant ruby eyes, Eragon's was a radiant deep blue and intense sapphire eyes.

"You too?" he asked, eyes going wide as he eyed the red dragon on the floor by his brother.

Murtagh nodded, the implications of what was happening starting to whirl around in his head.

"What about Roran's?" Eragon asked quietly.

"I am guessing the same thing happened to you," their cousin's somber voice commented behind him. Eragon entered Murtagh's room with the blue dragon, followed by Roran holding a small emerald dragon.

"Your hands get burnt to?" Eragon asked, settling down on the floor near Murtagh.

"Yeah," Roran replied as Murtagh nodded, both holding up their right palms as evidence. "This is not good."

"What? Of course it's good!" Eragon stated incredulously. "This means we can be Dragon Riders!"

"Keep it down, you'll wake Garrow," Murtagh hissed. "Being Riders right now isn't really the safest thing to be."

"Murtagh's right," Roran agreed.

"Do we really have a choice? What do you want to do? Kill the dragons?" Eragon's mind revolted at the very thought, and Roran and Murtagh didn't seem to keen on the idea either.

"So what, we're Riders whether we want to be or not?" Murtagh asked crossly. "This kind of responsibility should hardly be forced on us."

"Whether or not we want to be Riders won't change the fact that we are," Roran said wearily. "So what do we do about it?"

"We'll have to get stronger," Murtagh said after a pause. "We have to train and be able to fight because we will have to fight. As soon as we are discovered, everybody will either want to control or destroy us."

"What we need to do now is worry about caring for these hatchlings and what we are going to tell Father," Roran stated. "But you're right, we should start to train as soon as possible. We should also learn more about what we are getting ourselves into."

"Eragon can do that," Murtagh said, looking at his brother. "You can talk to the old story-teller Brom. Questions coming from you shouldn't surprise anyone, least of all him."

"Very funny."

OoooOoooOoooO

Garrow observed his three boys as they ate their breakfast. They were quiet this morning, which usually meant that they were up to something. They kept glancing furtively at each other, him, and the door to Murtagh's room.

"Alright, boys," he said finally. "What's on your minds?"

Murtagh and Eragon looked at Roran, who sighed and turned to him. "Father," he started. "Something… happened last night."

"Oh, care to tell me what?" he asked shrewdly. All three looked uncomfortable and shifted their gazes.

"Well," Murtagh finally answered. "It actually began during the hunting trip. We found three stones, or we thought they were stones at the time. We brought them back and last night, we found out that they were eggs."

Garrow raised his eyebrows. "And you found this out how?"

"They hatched," Eragon replied quietly. "They were dragon eggs."

They all looked anxiously at him. He sighed heavily. "Well, it seems you three have had both a great gift and great responsibility given to you. I guess I had better do all I can to get you ready. We'll start your training tomorrow," he said before clearing around the dishes.

Roran, Murtagh, and Eragon looked at each other in astonishment. _Garrow_ was going to train them.

"Don't look so surprised. There are a few things that you don't know about this family. But don't worry. All will be explained in time," Garrow assured. "However, make sure you keep this to yourselves. We need all the time we can get, and time will run short as soon as someone finds out about you."

Tbc…


	4. Chapter Three

Disclaimer: See Prologue.

Bond of Brothers

Chapter Three

Roran looked a little doubtful as his father handed them each a long stick shaped roughly like a sword. How could his father know anything about being a Rider? He decided to ask.

"I don't," Garrow answered. "I do, however, know that any Rider to emerge in these times will need to know how to defend themselves. Galbatorix will kill you if you refuse to join you. The Varden will give you refuge, but you cannot go to them until you are strong enough to rise above their politics. I can train you physically, with the sword, bow, and hand-to-hand combat, but I do not know all the ways of the Riders."

"Then how will we learn them?" Eragon asked.

"You'll get another teacher after me," his uncle replied vaguely. "Now, let's begin."

OoooOoooOoooO

Arya hated lying to Ajihad, but she couldn't trust the Varden anymore. At least, not all of them. There was a traitor among their ranks, and to tell the truth, she didn't care too much for all the politics that held sway. Ajihad would know soon enough. Her accomplice in the Varden would inform him at some point in time, when was at her discretion. If all went to plan, all three dragons would be hatched by then.

Of course, that was only if Brom was right. If he wasn't , she would bring the eggs back to the Varden, no harm done. Right or wrong, he was the one she had to go to. She had started this, and she had to make sure it was finished.

OoooOoooOoooO

Eragon's arms shook as he barely blocked another blow from his uncle. He had laughed as he had watched his cousin then his brother lose miserably in the sparring match against Garrow. However, now that it was his turn, his smile had vanished. Garrow was strong! Stronger than he had ever imagined, and he was obviously skilled, even to Eragon's untrained eye.

Faster than his eye could see, Garrow had struck out and he was on the ground with Garrow's stick to his throat. He felt a brush against his consciousness similar to the one felt the other night and he looked over to where the three young dragons watched. It felt like the dragon was trying to convey something… concern?

He pushed it out of his mind for the moment as his body realized how exhausted it was now that the training match was over.

"I know you three aren't tired? You still have your running to do," Garrow stated. "Five laps around the perimeter of the farm."

Eragon groaned, but got up with Murtagh and Roran and began to run.

OoooOoooOoooO

Murtagh stared at his dragon thoughtfully. He had puzzled over the connection between them. How could it be strong enough to convey thoughts? Was it possible for any bond to be that strong? Sure, the bond between him and Eragon and Roran was strong enough for them to convey messages without saying a word, but that wasn't like this. Or could it be?

He experimented by stretching out his consciousness to reach the dragon's mind. He found it and tried to get acquainted with the idea of letting someone else into his mind. The dragon's mind was very complex, much more complex than an animal's mind should be. Which led Murtagh to one conclusion, dragons were far more than mere animals, which the dragon drilled home by looking at him with intelligent eyes as it felt its mind probed.

Heartened by his discoveries, he tried something different. He opened his mind once more but this time instead of searching the dragon's consciousness, he reached out for his brother's.

_Eragon?_ he called out, not entirely certain it would work.

_Murtagh?_ his brother's voice echoed in his mind in confusion. _How are you doing this? _What _is this?_

_I don't know, but it's the same thing that allows us to contact our dragons! But we can do it with each other as well! And probably others too!_

_What does this mean?_ Eragon's voice sounded very worried, and Murtagh couldn't really blame him. The unspoken word of what this was punctuated by the silence between them. Magic.

OoooOoooOoooO

It was a few weeks before Eragon had an excuse to go into town and see Brom. A chisel needed to be repaired, and Roran was going to Carvahall to have it done. Eragon and Murtagh volunteered to go with him. Eragon so he could get information from Brom, and Murtagh so he could cover for Roran when he snuck off to go see Katrina.

Eragon walked back from Brom's house and met back up with the others. He had gained a lot of information, learned that these dragons were going to change their lives drastically, but he knew that Brom hadn't told him everything, and it irked him. However, he shared all he had found out with Murtagh and Roran. They walked back to the farm in silence as everything sank in.

When they arrived home, they immediately went to their dragons to give them a suitable name.

OoooOoooOoooO

_Well, we have to give you a name._ Murtagh impressed upon the red dragon. _Eragon gave us many to choose from. _He went on and listed all the names that Eragon had told him, met with a distasteful look to all of them and an outraged look when he mentioned a female one.

_Okay, apparently you don't like any of them. You don't have to be so hostile, but I guess even roses have thorns._ The dragon impressed his approval upon Murtagh. _You like that? How about that for your name then? Thorn._

The dragon hummed in contentment.

OoooOoooOoooO

As it turned out, Thorn was the only male among the three young dragons. Roran's dragon, like Murtagh's, did not care for any of the names Eragon had related to them. After a long process of Roran coming up with names and the dragon rejecting them, they finally agreed on the name Esmerra. Eragon, however, had no problem with his dragon. Saphira it seemed was somewhat easier to please than the other two. As the dragons grew in body and mind, this became quite obvious.

All three possessed a keen intelligence, however their personalities were rather distinct. Saphira was the most free spirited of the three, clearly demonstrating why she had chosen Eragon for a Rider. However, this did not mean that she was not a force to be reckoned with. She also seemed to be the youngest of the three, despite the fact that they all hatched at the same time. Esmerra was obviously the eldest, exhibiting a rather reserved, bordering aloof, attitude at times. She was proud and fierce, but quiet. Thorn was the exact opposite. He took delight in letting his thoughts be heard. He took his role as the only male seriously though, keeping a sharp eye on the two females, especially Saphira, sometimes to the point of being overprotective, which amused Eragon because the resemblance in this aspect to Murtagh was too much.

As the dragons began to actually communicate telepathically with their respective Riders, they soon discovered how deep the bond between the 'brothers' ran. Upon learning this, it was not long before all six of them were communicating with each other without a second thought. And as the dragons strengths grew, so did their Riders, for Garrow was tough trainer. Over the months, their skills grew, and they were beginning to realize that soon they would have learned all that they could from the man they all looked to as a father.

Tbc...


End file.
